Functionality usually takes a back seat or rides shotgun with environmentally friendly packaging materials, but that’s not the case with a new polymer film from the Australian firm Plantic Technologies Ltd.
Case-ready meat has replaced in-store wrapping for many products, and a new film provides another opportunity for centralized packaging in vacuum bags.
Tool-less opening of primal cuts in foodservice and back-of-house retail operations has come to pork, a year after Sealed Air Corp.’s Cryovac division introduced the feature to bags used in beef shipments.
Engineers have taken advantage of 3-D printing for rapid prototyping of tools and parts in recent years. Technicians at the German firm Festo AG & Co. are taking the technology to the next level to mass produce end-of-arm robotic attachments.
With exhibitors from 38 nations on the show floor, March’s Anuga FoodTec in Cologne, Germany was a showcase for global food packaging and processing technology.
America’s transition from traditional food and beverage containers to flexible pouches has moved at glacial speed, though sustainability efforts that seek to reduce packaging’s cost and weight have helped spur adoption in recent years.
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